


Truth Begins

by CloudAtlas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, First Meetings, Gen, Injury, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 11:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5584351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She has blank spaces in her mind – she knows this, has always known this. It’s been so long she's used to it now</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth Begins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/gifts).



> Thank you to **geckoholic** and **inkvoices** for beta. Lyrics from [Human by Daughter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbCeyb9okac).

_Underneath the skin there's a human_

 

She has blank spaces in her mind – she knows this, has always known this. It’s been so long she's used to it now. Times when there is nothing; no memory, no _feeling_ , not even a blank void. Just a clean slate. She'll be in one place and then suddenly she is somewhere else. It could be minutes, hours, even days later.

Then there are other times too – when memories overlap, indistinct like infinite reflections in parallel mirrors. There she is en pointe. But also  _there_  she is, with a knife in her hand. Her toes hurt and the knife is cool in her palm. They can't have happened at the same time, but they exist in the same place. Ghosts of lives lived simultaneously. 

She knows she is special because she has been told. She knows she is different because people look at her with fear. They call her  _monster,_  they call her  _dangerous_ , they call her  _death._

She knows that they aren't wrong, but she can never remember the reasons why she's called that. She thinks it has to do with the blood.

Blank spaces, you see? You cannot tell of things you cannot remember. But there is always blood.

It's in her mouth. It’s on her hands. It’s in her soul.

She’s _made_ of blood, but made different to other people – made differently by _them_.

She doesn't know what they’ve done to her and she doesn't know who they are, but there is almost always blood. Warm and tacky and tasting metallic.

She doesn't think it's hers. In fact, it's almost never hers. This time though, she thinks it might be  _his_.

Normally she never finds out whose it is and that stopped scaring her a long time ago. She knows that's not normal either, but then normal for who? Maybe not for other people, people without shadow memories and a life like a taken-in suit – bits cut away with the whole getting smaller and smaller – but for her this is what she knows. This is normal.

Well, not  _this._ Not  _him_.

There isn't usually someone with her – not alive at least. There has sometimes been evidence of people who are very much  _not_  alive anymore, and she has come to the obvious conclusion that those bodies have something to do with her.

The blood, you see.

But this man is alive. Or at least she thinks he is.

(She doesn’t have much experience with the living. Her shadow-memories do not count.)

His breath rattles. They could be death rattles, but they keep going so she's assuming that they're not.

And then: “Are you alright?”

She’s confused. Her reality is steady right now, though that doesn't necessarily mean it will remain so. Nevertheless, that doesn't sound like the kind of question a dying man would ask. But then, what would she know? And  _she_  didn't say anything.

“You checked out”– choked in breath, held then exhaled with a bubble of blood – “for a minute there.”

She hasn't gone anywhere. At least, not that she's aware of.

But then again, this man wasn't here before and her _aware_ ness isn't to be trusted.

“I think you've broken my” – he tries to move and groans loudly – “ _everything_.” His breathing is harsh and there’s a pause before he manages to speak again. “Give us a hand?”

She looks at him, lying covered in blood, then down at her hands. They are red, knuckles swollen and split. There's an ache in her body that means she's fought recently. There's a body on the floor that confirms this.

No, not a body. A man.

“C'mon” – his eyes look too amused for someone so red – “I can't do it myself.”

There are blanks in her head but nevertheless she searches her patchwork memories for a reason not to help him.

She doesn't find one.

To be honest, she doesn’t find much of anything.

 

_Buried deep within there's a human_

 

There are blank spaces in her mind and fuzzy edges, overlapping memories and far too many other people.

She was taught to wield a blade aged five. She was taught to dance aged five. She was taught to lie aged five. She remembers all these things clearly. She also remembers nothing at all.

There is a man, covered in blood. She’s not sure where he came from, but he’s here now. She thinks she hurt him, but she can’t see any reason for her to have done so. Her job was to kill an Australian politician who was spending valuable time in brothels trying to muscle in on human trafficking deals he had no right to. She didn’t know this before, but she knows it now. That mission was carried out flawlessly, as her missions always are.

She wonders if he’d been following her. If he had, he must be very good. But still, he’s covered in blood now, so maybe not _that_ good.

She flexes her hands. Her split knuckles sting.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

He looks at her strangely, his eyes flicking around the room like he’s looking for someone else who was here only a minute ago. She gets that a lot.

“Can’t really go anywhere like this,” he answers slowly and there’s something in his gaze she finds unsettling, like he’s working her out. “Care to help?”

This man was not the mission and she isn’t built for helping. Really, she should finish him off. But –

“Have you been following me?”

Information is always worth having.

“For three weeks.” His voice is scratchy and weak, and there’s blood on his lips, but she hears every word.

That can’t be true. She would have noticed. She reaches for the memories and finds them slippery like deep sea fish. She can’t be sure of anything and it frustrates her when she remembers that. No solid bedrock from which to build herself up, only these shifting sands, steady for just long enough for a ghost person to form.

She is a body filled with ghosts.

She needs more information.

“I’ll help you if you tell me who sent you.”

“SHIELD,” he says, and he’s so _easy_.

She’s not one to keep her promises, never has been. You can’t keep promises you can’t remember making. Can’t spill secrets you don’t know and can’t reveal plans you’re not privy to.

(You can’t dance ballet you haven’t learned, either, but then again, you never learned ballet did you?)

(Yes I did.)

She stares at him and he doesn’t change. She waits a while longer, but her memories remain clear. His breathing gets shallower and his skin is greying but still she waits. She has time, even if he doesn’t. Or maybe she doesn’t either.

She stays solid though; this ghost version of herself. For the first time, she can remember her promise.

 

_And despite everything I'm still human_

 

She isn't sure why, but as she gently puts splints on the man's fingers she is reminded of a cat she looked after once.

In those times when her mind is her own – but who _is_ she? – she doesn't remember being left on her own for long. Those that created her, made her what she is – who control the black and the blood and the fuzzy, foggy double memories – they usually find her, send a message, bring her back, though back _where_ , she isn’t sure. The memories she can be sure of are usually of her on her own in various bolt holes and safe houses where she normally sees no one and nothing else.

But once, at one safe house, there was a cat. She doesn't know how it came to be there, or how it came to be in that state, but there it was; mangy and bloody and with a broken leg.

She set the leg and cleaned the blood.

Its fur was so soft. It reminded her of those times she'd come to wearing silk dresses. They'd be bloody and torn, but the material was so soft against her skin.

Splinting the man's fingers is a new sensation to her. She doesn't remember having touched anyone's skin like this for a very long time.

(His hand is strangely soft; strangely _alive_.)

The man watches her in silence as she splints his various broken bones, checks him for internal bleeding, makes sure he won’t aggravate his wounds when he moves.

He watches her in silence as she cleans first him, then herself, of blood.

It is only when she is finished and at a loss as what to do with her now-still hands that he speaks.

“Why are you doing this?”

It's not a curious question – or, it is, but not to the tune of  _why are you saving me when you don't have to?_ It's more to the tune of  _do you_ know  _why you are doing this?_

She searches her memories for anything concrete. There are some more blanks now; she fades in and out like a badly tuned radio, replaced by other ‘shes’.

(She doesn’t remember moving him. She doesn’t remember agreeing to help. She doesn’t remember being this unsteady.)

(She doesn’t remember.)

She has a suspicion that if those that made her were here they would not be pleased. After all, normally when men are covered in blood they are dead men.

This man was covered in blood, but he is not dead.

She cannot find a reason in her patchwork memories for her not to help him. She cannot find a reason for why he should die either.

Her life has always been curiously devoid of reason. It hasn't bothered her until now.

“Because you were hurt,” she says eventually, tentatively. She can't remember speaking for a long while. But she is sure she must do it in those blank spaces in her head. After all, her throat and mouth don't hurt from disuse.

Almost nothing about her hurts from disuse.  _Over_ use, maybe. But not  _dis_ use.

At her reply the man looks impossibly sad.

 

_I think I'm dying here_

 

There’s a blank in her memory and a man who was bloody but now is not. There is a cold room and a body filled with ghosts. There are questions that he keeps answering.

(So easy.)

She flicks through ghosts so quickly she feels like a film reel unspooling.

There is a choice and, as she unravels – as the seams split and the void opens beneath her feet, as the crunch of gravel signals that _they_ have arrived, as she touches the man’s skin and thinks of silk and cats she knows to be dead – she realises that she is a monster and a killer and a dancer and someone who can help because she was asked.

So she wedges the man in a corner and gives him a gun and says, “Kill whoever you want but I won’t forget.”

And his breathing is shallow, but his skin is less grey and his hand is steady when he aims his bullets at them instead of her.

She named the cat Liho, she suddenly remembers: _Unlucky._ His fur was soft and they killed him. It was a long time ago, but she realises now that she is angry about it. He was something she could help and they took that away from her.

They will not take this man even if he turns on her in the end, because this time she remembered her promise.

This time she remembers.


End file.
